


i love a rainy night (it's such a beautiful sight)

by puella_peanut



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: And where there is food there is an Alfred, Ivan goes on a late night shopping adventure, M/M, Not really but he needed some food, The 90's of course
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:08:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23325271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puella_peanut/pseuds/puella_peanut
Summary: Maybe it was because this American didn't look like where you came from and that was good. Very good. His skin was too tan, his smile too cheerful, his stance too sure, and his face too alive for almost one a.m. Capitalism looked none too shabby on him.(Neither did that tight shirt.)
Relationships: America/Russia (Hetalia)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 58





	i love a rainy night (it's such a beautiful sight)

**Author's Note:**

> This was posted _ages_ ago here and on [my tumblr](https://puella-peanut.tumblr.com/) but I removed it because I thought I'd turn it into...something. That something never happened, so here it is again because we need some meet-cute pointless fluff in these trying times. 
> 
> Title is stolen from I Love a Rainy Night by Eddie Rabbit. And the group mentioned inside is The Stray Cats, who you should definitely check out. 
> 
> May the force be with you all.

It all started with a chance meeting at the supermarket.

When you lost your umbrella under the half-lit, flickering tubes at half-past midnight. You stood there, dripping puddles on the floor as if your clothing (or perhaps just yourself) was melting at the seams. Over your head the light panted as if it were all out of breath even though it had nowhere to run but the sharp corners of lonely aisles. That old imported brolly—two holes in the pink fabric, chipped wood for a handle—had rolled under a towering display of canned sausages and other metallic things. All the way out to the other side of the unknown.

You sighed at this; a defeated, damp sound. (Meanwhile, your footprints left a soggy path behind with every step you took.)

They'd lied when they told you there were no pyramids in America, because there you were, passing by a bunch of them—stacked in fearsome triangles with flashy names like _Campbells_ and _Del Monte_ , _Green Giant_ and _Libby's. Y_ ou had learned from experience that they tasted stale under bright, gaudy wrapping and jagged tin edges that were too hungry for your fingertips. These were expired, so therefore on _sale_ (an English word you liked very much)—but still too pricey for your wallet, because you had far too much bare space between six dollars and your next payday. 

(Besides, the sodium content was shocking.)

It was a Friday night, and there wasn't much happening in middle-of-nowhere North Dakota, and there wasn't much you could have said about yourself even if there had been. You were a stranger in a strange land, and it wasn't quite that easy to shrug off your foreignness like the way you could shrug off your old trenchcoat.

(Beige and unremarkable like everything else in your new life.)

You shuffled on over to the next aisle of discounted, pasty bread (a familiar section brought on by late night raids to this grocery store and, well, starvation)—when his head appeared around the corner, like it was disembodied. Some ghost of supermarkets past, or maybe you had just been watching too many cheesy horror movies on rented tapes.

(The Americans called it Blockbuster—you called it wasting time with a purpose.)

It did not give you what the film-industry called a jumpscare,because _of course_ it was not an unattached head—(the country was odd, but not _that_ odd)—and the rest of him followed a moment later, piece by piece.

(Assembled and labeled in convenient parts for your tired, yet curious eyes.)

Glasses, shoulders, fringed jacket hooked around a waist, and tight blue-jeans splattered with the rainy night outside, like water-dipped polka dots. He had yellow hair like the sand of beaches you had never been to, and a smile brighter than the flashlight you had purchased and dropped on your long-suffering toes four times and counting—you didn't think you had ever come across someone who looked so boldly, unapologetically _American_ in your life.

(You were two months fresh from the former Soviet Union, a place where Americans were considered a rare species, and observed with great suspicion.)

“Hey, you dropped this!" his voice swung out with a cowboy twang, an accent you'd come to recognize from watching _Unforgiven_ like a religion. It was good—the movie, of course, not the voice. (You told yourself that twice in a row, just to be sure.)

He wagged the umbrella like a tail of a dog, friendly and relaxed. An unexpected stray in an aisle of calories. “Do ya want it back?" He scrunched his eyes, nose following suit. You saw how his freckles were smudged, and how a round dimple popped out near his mouth like it wanted to see who it was smiling at.

(Even then you could hardly believe it was you.)

"It’s got _two_ holes in it, ya know!" he continued on as if he'd never seen such a thing before. 

You wanted to say _something,_ but you were so new to the States, and for all your efforts, English still tasted strange on your tongue. An acquired taste that weighed too much for words that didn't have enough understanding in them to balance everything out. Didn't have much reason to either. The best you could do then was,

“…Yes,” though those one syllable words were _always_ the hardest to get out. They tasted like refusal and cold shoulders. Bottled rudeness, even when you didn't mean it.

But _he_ wasn't thwarted. (You had the impression, even then, that he wasn't the type that was easily thwarted anyhow.)

“ _Yes_ ya want it back or _yes_ it's gotta hole? Oops, I mean _two._ ” He chuckled then, practically buoyant, like some hot air balloon. His teeth were shiny, like the flash on a camera, or a Hollywood star.

“Yes…both.” Mathematicians answer, and you never were much good at math. There were four schools in your district, none of them universities. Even if there had been, the metro wasn’t available in your location. (That’s what it meant, being between a rock and a hard place.)

Nonetheless, his cheerfulness spun the air around you both, blowing you away from memories rich in poverty. It breathed life into dead aisles and price tags that packed on the pounds in reduced sales. You noticed he was wearing a long sleeved Stray Cats t-shirt from a concert you'd certainly never been to. (Loreley Germany, nineteen-eighty-three. You had more of a chance of getting tickets to the moon.) But you had collected several cd’s, first purchases in the States and all that. Poster included. They'd come in handy (the cd’s, not the poster)—during all those lonely drives in your delivery truck, and you knew the feeling to the songs even if you couldn't get the lyrics quite right.

“Think I could get ya to say more than two words?” He swung the umbrella like a baton, raindrops flying and landing on plastic labels, on your second-hand boots. Under the tube light, the water didn't glint like diamonds, but that was alright. Instead, you reached for the umbrella. Your fingers din't touch, but they might as well have, because it was damp in your hand, and warm where his skin had clasped it. Like American-English, you wanted to try and get to learn it better. What that _“it”_ was exactly, you weren't sure, but you were going to get there eventually.

(Of course you have.)

Maybe it was because this American didn't look like where you came from and that was good. _Very_ good. His skin was too tan, his smile too cheerful, his stance too sure, and his face too alive for almost one a.m. Capitalism looked none too shabby on him.

(Neither did that tight shirt.)

And you may have never seen the Stray Cats in person, but you were almost certain they had never looked better than they did right then and there, imprinted in the faded cotton of tours long past on athletic American chests.

So you shifted your umbrella to your other hand, wetting your baguette in the process. You needed something to do, something to reach for. You paused, your hand a balancing act, a bridge in midair to friendship.

(Well, something like that anyways.)

Because in a way, he was as foreign to you as you were to him. You liked that, being on equal footing since arriving from Kapotnya two months ago; finally acquiring some gravity on this strange American land, in the belly of its civilization (on sale though it was). You held out your hand a little farther and thought, with some amusement, that he really _did_ manage to get you to speak more than two words, in the end. Now that was an American for you, wasn't it? Indomitable optimism running through their veins instead of blood. Better get used to it.

“My name…Ivan.”

It took a moment, like he couldn't _believe_ his luck—but a laugh walked hand in hand onto his face with his very brightest smile, his eyes glinting like the warm summer skies Russia was always slow to get. They were twice as blue too; denim eyes, Levi’s. Very American, and it suited him. 

(It suits you now too.)

“Hey dude, I’m Alfred!”

So that was how you added another word to add to your increasing English vocabulary. It was, even then, the nicest tasting one.

(And it's still your favorite, even now.)


End file.
